


Check Your Canon at the Door

by Fallowsthorn



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Intercanon Animal Refuge, Just Add Kittens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 03:09:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4084357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallowsthorn/pseuds/Fallowsthorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desmond finds a strange flyer, and lands them in a strange (but not unpleasant) mess.</p><p>Or, sometimes you just need to read about some of your favorite characters cuddling with kittens for the afternoon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Check Your Canon at the Door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grinningchaos](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=grinningchaos).



> Many thanks to [grinningchaos](http://grinningchaos.tumblr.com/) for goading me into posting this. They don't have an AO3 account but can be found RPing Jeff the Killer and Zalgo at the Tumblog above.

If Ezio’s boots weren’t so thick, Desmond never would have seen it.

As it was, he was already cursing the lack of armor on his shoulders every time he overshot a beam or hit his head on something. Having his stride shortened by some undetectable amount was just adding insult to injury.

 _Not to mention injury to injury,_ he grumbled to himself, shaking his hands to rid them of the stinging brought on by stopping himself from running face-first into a wall. At least the streets were quiet in pre-dawn Monteriggioni, and no one had seen him momentarily forget about inertia. He stared at the flyers in front of him absently while he recentered himself, then tilted his head slightly. Huh.

  
**Intercanon Animal Refuge**

**We cater to all canons and compatible fanons with discretion. Come to relax for a few hours and you just might find a new friend!**

**Your character-specific transport phrase is:**

Eden can wait.

**If you would like to bring guests with you, simply ensure physical contact at the moment of transport. This transport phrase is single use and will expire on December 20, 2015, 12:01 AM local UTC. If you would like another one, please request it at the front desk. ******  


That... was probably worth letting everyone else take a look. Desmond snagged the flyer off the wall and shoved it in his pocket to jog back to home base. Call him an idiot, but he wanted to know what it meant.

* * *

As expected, he had no luck with Lucy or Shaun, who were no-fun workaholics anyway. Rebecca was the first one to give in to curiosity and pick up the slightly crumpled paper from the table Desmond had put it on.

“‘Eden can wait’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That now I have to deal with two layabouts who don’t want to do their actual jobs, instead of one?” Shaun didn’t bother turning around to snark, and likewise Rebecca didn’t bother to snap back, just rolled her eyes and flipped the paper over to look at the other side.

“Hey, did you read this?”

Desmond shook his head, confused, and moved closer to read over Rebecca’s shoulder.

“The Intercanon Animal Refuge is not responsible for any disruptions of continuity due to temporal displacement, otherworldly or godly interference, or canonically all-powerful forces that may be able to detect the extratemporal and extradimensional nature of the Refuge and may act on this knowledge. However, we employ sorcerers, witches, science-fictionists (hard and soft), acolytes of all religions with more than fifty followers at the time of your canonical setting, and technicians trained in the use of several different techniques and degrees of mind-wiping. While our normal procedure is to take you out of your normal timeline for the duration of your visit to the Refuge and reinsert you a fraction of a second after, please consult with our staff if you believe this method may have an impact on your canon large enough to affect the narrative arc... what the fuck?”

“Somehow I doubt that part was written on there,” Lucy said, paying attention now that it looked like the Animus was a lost cause for the time being.

“Uh, no,” Desmond said, and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Miranda was less of a mind screw, Jesus.”

“That’s because Miranda actually has some basis in reality,” Shaun said, exasperated enough to stop pretending to do work and face them. “For all you know, a random person off the street typed that up to mess with whoever saw it. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Okay, let me remind you that we’re chasing a magical golden ball that kills people and makes holographic duplicates of the person wielding it, on the word of a time-travelling message in a bottle shaped like an ancient Roman deity, who was activated by Ezio but spoke directly to Desmond, and looked straight at the Animus’s camera while she did it,” Rebecca deadpanned. “And that was creepy as shit, so _you_ don’t get to talk about ‘basis in reality.’”

After a brief silence, Desmond mumbled, “Well, when you put it like that.”

Lucy made an uncharitable sound that she tried to turn into a cough.

Shaun threw up his hands. “Fine! Go on your wild goose chase for all I care! Only trying to save the world, here!”

Rebecca straight-up laughed, at that. “Come on, Shaun. Let’s try it. If you’re right, it’ll only take thirty seconds and then you can lord it over the rest of us.”

“Are you twelve? You already tried it, it didn’t work,” Shaun grumped, but he stood and walked towards them as he said it.

“It says ‘character-specific,’” Lucy pointed out, coming closer as well. “Ignoring how weird that is, maybe....” She nodded at Desmond.

“I’m the one who saw it, so I have to say it,” Desmond said, finishing the thought. “Oh, uh...” He took the flyer from Rebecca and turned it over again. “If you want to come with, you have to be touching me, I think.” He held out an arm.

“Fantastic! Let’s just make this as weird as possible, shall we?” said Shaun, with mock cheer. Rebecca gave him a none-too-gentle nudge, and he grudgingly put a hand on Desmond’s arm with the rest of them.

Desmond cleared his throat, blithely ignoring the feeling of incredible foolishness that was creeping up on him. “Um... Eden can wait?”

And suddenly, they weren’t in Monteriggioni anymore.

It wasn’t unlike waking up after a long stretch in the Animus, or maybe that was just the closest thing Desmond could relate it to; there was no jolt or flash of light to mark the event. Between one second and the next, they were in a completely different room - if, as Desmond was starting to suspect, the flyer was telling the complete truth, a completely different world.

Shaun let go of Desmond’s arm, looked around, and swore, briefly but profoundly.

Rebecca let go almost as quickly and cackled at Shaun. “You’re just pissy that we were right and you were wrong.”

He rounded on her. “Who is this ‘we’? You were the one who hounded us all into this!”

“So you admit I was right!”

“I _admit_ that you might have gotten us all killed! Where are we?”

“I mean, we could always ask,” Lucy interjected. She started to point, then realized she was still holding Desmond’s hand and let it go quickly, both of them blushing slightly. Lucy recovered first. “At the front desk.”

They all looked to the front of the room, where a cheerful person stood behind a desk, corralling a kitten on its surface. They looked up and waved, smiling broadly. “Welcome to the Intercanon Animal Refuge! You can call me Jo. Are you first-timers, or have you visited before?”

Desmond shook his head slightly. “Uh - first - uh, what’s going on?”

“Yeah, you sound like firsties. Okay, let me give you the spiel. The Intercanon Animal Refuge is a haven for people of all types of stories and all roles within those stories to come relax and destress from the trials they’re going through, by hanging out with some of the animals here at the shelter. And who knows, you might qualify for adoption and find a new friend who needs a home.”

“Stories?” Rebecca said warily.

Jo nodded. “In layperson’s terms, you can think of it this way. You know the multiverse theory?” They waited for the group to nod. “We call each different universe its own story, and the histories of those particular universes are called their canons. The flyer has some more technical information than that, but you don’t really need to know any of that - if it doesn’t make sense to you naturally, it’s not gonna be important.”

“Look, this might sound rude,” Shaun interrupted, “but is there something... strange, maybe about the lighting behind you?”

“Oh!” Jo said, realizing something. “No, I’m sorry, that’s just the oh-see filter, nothing’s wrong with your eyes or anything. It’s to make sure you, well, don’t start thinking of me as a unique person. Appearance-wise, I’m supposed to be generic within the basic guidelines of your species, setting, and so on. It might take a minute for it to pick up on you specifically, but any discomfort or confusion shouldn’t last longer than a couple minutes.”

“Hold on,” Lucy said. “I think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here.”

Jo took a deep breath. “Look, we can’t do or fix everything for you, but we can do this. Take a break. Play with the small, fluffy, harmless animals of your setting. For a few hours, let your guard down. You’re safe here. Nothing bad will happen to you within these walls. This is our promise, and it is the only promise we hold, above all else: we are a Refuge, and we will stay that way.”

They had started off their speech glancing around the group, but ended it looking solely at Lucy, sincerely and steadily.

After a moment, Lucy let her shoulders drop slightly, and nodded. “We have been pushing ourselves kind of hard lately,” she conceded.

Jo grinned. “Excellent!” They gave the kitten, now asleep in a bowl, a final pat, and walked around the desk with a clear plastic bin. “One last thing, though - no weapons with the animals. You’ll get them back, but we don’t want any accidents with curious paws and noses.”

The Assassins looked between themselves, automatically deferring to Lucy, who sighed. “At this point... if this is, somehow, some weird Templar ploy, then we’re already screwed. Might as well go all in.”

Desmond shrugged and started undoing the buckles on his bracer. That was the only weapon he had on him, and Shaun and Rebecca weren’t much more heavily armed, with only two knives and a gun in total. It was Lucy they were left staring at, as she unloaded more small knives, guns, bullets, smoke bombs, and grenades than Desmond had previously though could fit on a person without disrupting the line of her clothing.

She looked at them wryly when she noticed. “Abstergo got me once,” she said. “I’m surprised you aren’t more paranoid.”

“Oh, we’re paranoid,” Shaun said, in a tone of incredulous amazement. “We just don’t express that via walking around with a small armory in our pockets. And now you just give it up? We don’t know anything about this place! No offense,” he added to Jo, though it was more lip service to the idea of courtesy than anything else.

Lucy shrugged. “I don’t know, something just tells me this is okay.”

Thus agreed, they were ushered into a small room which, as promised, housed a wall full of cubby holes, a wide variety of cat perches and toys, and what looked like about twenty cats, though Desmond saw more of them every time he double-checked.

One, a brave or curious brown longhair, uncurled from its nap and wandered over to them, stretching as it went. Rebecca reached down to pet its head, then picked it up, with little protest from the cat itself. “He’s so soft!”

Desmond looked around, but Jo had quietly absented themselves. He jumped slightly as he felt pressure on his hip; a purring tabby was looking for attention, and had decided to make that clear by reaching up and leaning on him.

It took them a while to get used to their surroundings, both Assassins and cats, but when they did, it was clear the Refuge had been worth their trust. Yes, petting cats was calming, but Desmond could swear there was some quality to the place, some atmosphere that made tension ease, made room to breathe where before there had been none. He hadn’t realized how claustrophobic he’d felt, under thick stone at Monteriggioni, until suddenly he no longer needed to be.

They didn’t speak, not wanting to break whatever fragile luck had led them there. Lucy found a box of cat toys and brushes, and even Shaun, cynical though he continued to be, had wound up playing fetch with a surprisingly eager cat. Rebecca was drowning under a tide of cats begging to be brushed, and Desmond rummaged through the box and started helping her out. It was simple, sensory, almost mindless. They’d needed it.

And so they stayed, quiet and calm.

* * *

Even a perfect Refuge must fall to the siege of responsibility. Eventually, Jo came back to them, still smiling but apologetic and gentle. “It’s time to go,” they said, and no one questioned it.

As they led them out into the main foyer, they explained that they could give out more passphrases if anyone wanted them, “but they’ll be personal this time. If you use your own at the same time as someone else, you’ll both end up here, but you don’t need to travel as a group. Come to us when you need us.”

They spoke with each of them while the other three waited, collecting their weapons and picking cat hair off their clothes. Desmond didn’t know what they said to the others, but when it came to his turn, Jo just looked him up and down and said, “Your story needs you.”

“Don’t I know it,” Desmond said, without so much bitterness as resignation.

“Mm,” Jo said, and paused, then nodded at Lucy, Shaun, and Rebecca in a loose huddle on the far side of the room. “They need you too. Don’t know if they need you more.”

“What?”

Jo shook their head. “That’s all I can tell you, sorry. Can’t interfere with the canon. Here’s your phrase-” They scribbled something on a scrap of paper. “-and it expires the same date as the other one, twelve-twenty-one-twelve, midnight at whatever your world’s universal time is. And, one more thing.” They laid a hand on Desmond’s wrist, and looked into his eyes. “Thank you for coming here. Your story is important, but you are too. Take care of yourself.”

Desmond didn’t know what to say to that, so he just nodded, a little awkwardly. “Uh. Thanks.”

Jo released him, and raised their voice to address the whole room. “Whenever you’re ready to leave, there’s a door on your right. Please make sure you leave with everything you arrived with. Plot-significant items will be returned magically but random objects will simply be left for the edges of the multiverse pocket. Anyone who isn’t part of the main cast of characters in your canon will be unable to access the Refuge, and any and all indications of its existence will look like gibberish to them, so please don’t try it, and for heavens’ sakes please don’t try it again and again because it won’t work the fortieth time any better than it did the fourth. I hope you enjoyed your time here and I hope I’ll see you again.”

“Back to paranoia, then,” Lucy said. She rolled her shoulders and breathed in deep. “Let’s go save the world.”

* * *

Much later, when Desmond had begun to wonder if it had even really happened, he found a scrap of paper in his pocket. On it, in unfamiliar but legible handwriting, was, “The apple can wait.”

Maybe it could, for just a little while.

**Author's Note:**

> The Intercanon Animal Refuge is open for use by everyone in any work, with two conditions:
> 
>   1. this paragraph must be included in any work involving the Intercanon Animal Refuge, and
>   2. it is a Refuge, and it will stay that way.
> 

> 
> Otherwise, you may embellish, retcon, elaborate on, or flat-out change any other aspect of the Refuge and how it works to better suit your story, though it is suggested that you follow the general guidelines laid out in the fic above.


End file.
